SC state Sen. Hugh Leatherman in hospice care

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) - State Sen. Hugh Leatherman, South Carolina’s oldest and most powerful state lawmaker, is currently receiving hospice care after the discovery of what colleagues described as an inoperable cancer.

Leatherman’s staff notified a handful of lawmakers that the 90-year-old Florence Republican was recently hospitalized after experiencing severe abdominal pain, according to a GOP senator.

The legislator spoke to The Associated Press on Thursday on the condition of anonymity, because he was not authorized to speak publicly on Leatherman’s health.

During surgery to remove parts of Leatherman’s intestine, physicians discovered an “advanced and aggressive” cancer, the lawmaker said. Afterward, they discharged Leatherman to enter hospice care at his home in Florence, about 80 miles east of Columbia.

In his 11th term, Leatherman is among the longest-serving lawmakers in South Carolina’s Legislature. First elected to the Senate in 1980 as a Democrat, Leatherman unsuccessfully ran for governor several years later before switching parties in the 1990s, a move taken by a number of Democratic lawmakers, as Republicans gained dozens of seats in Congress.